“Playful and brooding, meditative and declamatory, these poems affirm Šalamun’s status as a major Central European poet.” — The New Yorker
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At last available in English translation, Soy Realidad is Tomaž Šalamun’s twenty-first collection of poetry, originally published in 1985. Showing a maturing poet at home as a citizen of the world, Soy Realidad ranges far from Šalamun’s Slovenia, combining his native language with Latin, French, English, and Spanish, as well as evoking such places as Belize, the Sierra Nevada, and Mexico City. From sex to God, from landscape to literature, Šalamun’s poetry is as ever a restless and witty inquisitor, peeling back the layers of the world.
Tomaž Šalamun is a Slovenian poet born in Zagreb in 1941. He has published more than thirty books of poetry and frequently teaches at universities in Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Texas. Early in his career, he edited the literary magazine Perspektive and was briefly jailed on political charges. He studied art history at the University of Ljubljana and published his first collection, Poker, at the age of twenty-five. He has won Slovenia’s Prešeren and Mladost Prizes, as well as a Pushcart Prize, and was a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University. He is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art.